Summary

The Navy's strategy for acquiring and implementing a Navy/Marine Corps Intranet has several weaknesses that put this effort at unnecessary risk. The Navy/Marine Corps Intranet is intended to serve about 360,000 users in the United States, Guantanamo Bay, Puerto Rico, and Iceland. The Navy plans to acquire intranet capabilities from commercial vendors, which will own and maintain all required desktop and network hardware and software and provide all required information technology services. The Navy has been working to award a contract in June 2000--an aggressive deadline set by the military services in order to have initial intranet capabilities available by December 2001. However, the Navy's request for proposals was issued without (1) developing a formal analysis of program alternatives and completing a business case analysis to determine an appropriate acquisition strategy for the proposed Intranet; (2) resolving key program issues, such as how the intranet is to be managed within the Navy, how it will be funded, and how its information technology and other personnel may be affected by the Intranet; and (3) taking risk mitigation steps, such as testing the proposed approach on a smaller scale. GAO also cites several shortcomings in the Office of the Secretary of Defense's oversight of the Navy Intranet effort.

GAO noted that: (1) the Navy's acquisition approach and implementation plan for developing a Navy/Marine Corps Intranet have a number of weaknesses that make the effort unnecessarily risky; (2) the Navy has been working toward awarding a contract in June of this year--the result of an aggressive, service-established goal to accomplish an initial level of operational capability by December 2001; (3) however, the Navy has developed and issued its request for proposals without: (a) developing a formal analysis of program alternatives and completing a business case analysis to determine an appropriate acquisition strategy for the proposed Intranet; (b) resolving key programmatic issues such as how the Intranet arrangement is to be managed within the Navy, how the Intranet will be funded, and how its information technology and other personnel may be affected by the Intranet; and (c) taking certain risk mitigation steps such as testing the proposed approach on a smaller scale; and (4) with regards to the Office of the Secretary of Defense's oversight of the Navy Intranet effort, GAO found that this organization has not fully: (a) defined how it will oversee program requirements for the Intranet effort; and (b) established that the Intranet approach will be consistent with the Department of Defense's command, control, communications, computer, and intelligence systems architecture, particularly the Department's system interoperability and information assurance requirements.